Young man left alone on street faints and dies in southeast Turkey

GAZİANTEP - Doğan News Agency

CİHAN photo

A young man has died in a hospital in the southeastern province of Gaziantep after fainting on a minibus, being taken out of the vehicle, and then being left alone in the street without help.

Halil Cengiz, 25, was travelling from the Suruç district of Gaziantep to the city center on June 17 when he fainted. He died in hospital four hours after he was taken to the intensive care unit. 

Street security camera footage shows the man hours before he died. The footage shows a minibus stopping on the road, after which one passenger drags Cengiz out of the minibus and leaves him by the side of the street. The passenger can be seen taking one of Cengiz’s shoes and his bag and leaving them next to the man, who appears to be unconscious at that moment. 

The minibus then leaves the area, and an ambulance arrives 20 minutes later. The female health worker who got out of the ambulance first can be seen returning to the vehicle without attending to the patient, after which two male health workers carry the patient in their arms, rather than putting him on a stretcher.

Cengiz was reportedly one of nine children in a family who had migrated to İzmir to work. He was sentenced to four years and two months jail for his involvement in a fight in 2009, and he reportedly went to Gaziantep from İzmir in order to escape his sentence. After police searched for him in his house in Gaziantep, Cengiz went to Suruç and attempted to cross over the nearby border to Syria. After failing to cross into Syria, he decided to return to Gaziantep city center by minibus from Suruç. It was this minibus on which he fainted.
  
His father, Suphi Cengiz, has vowed to file a lawsuit against those responsible for the death of his son.

“I have been able to reach this footage five days after his death. We will complain about the minibus driver, the ambulance team and the state hospital where he died. My son had a phone in his pocket. They could at least have called us. They only called us after his body was taken to the morgue,” he said. 

“Nobody approached my son in the street, as if the minibus driver had left a suicide bomber by the side of the street. How can a human being be left alone in a street in such a situation?” the father asked. 

The investigation into the case is continuing and the body of Cengiz will be taken for an autopsy.